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APP wants to know: Why no action on Lakewood?

Because The Asbury Park Press Is No Longer Relevant

The Asbury Park Press is outraged that Governor Chris Christie did not make the problems of the Lakewood school system a primary topic of his town hall meeting in Freehold yesterday.  The Neptune Nudniks are also upset that Congressman Chris Smith hasn’t returned their calls for comment or held a press conference about the Lakewood schools since the paper and pay site ran their series CHEATED about the problems in Lakewood schools last week.

Christie spent much, if not most, of his town hall meeting yesterday talking about education reform.  His focus was on tenure reform as a way to improve results in our failing urban schools and to stop paying “a Kings Ransom for failure” by flushing 15% of the state’s tax dollars into failing schools as New Jersey has done for decades.

If ever there was evidence that The Asbury Park Press has become irrelevant, it is their heavily promoted Cheated series, yesterday’s town hall meeting, combined with today’s rants by the Nudniks that Christie and Smith are not paying attention to them.

Why didn’t Christie talk about Lakewood yesterday to hundreds of residents in the APP’s coverage area?   Because no one asked him.  The governor was talking about education.  The APP had just finished a “special series” on the Lakewood schools.  Not one person in the audience of the town hall made the connection and asked the governor a question about Lakewood.

The outrage at Gannett should not be coming out of Neptune.  It should be coming from the company’s corporate headquarters in McLean, Virginia.  One of the company’s major brands is failing miserably.  It has no influence in the community it ostensibly serves.    The APP’s readership has been CHEATED by them for too long and now they are not paying attention to them.

When APP announced their CHEATED series I wondered, “Lakewood?  Why not their namesake Asbury Park?”  Still, I figured I’d read it because 700-1000 people per day check in on this site for my take on current events.   The pay site promoted the series but said to buy the paper to read it.  It would be published on the net later.  I figured I’d wait.  Then I happened to be at The Sandwitch Shoppe in Highlands.  The paper was on the counter so I read the piece about the Board of Education Attorney.  It was all spin and inuendo looking for a scandal.  The attorney had too much power, he made too much money and now he wasn’t the attorney anymore.   Nothing there for my readers, I won’t waste my time or your’s.  My political agenda is more interesting and better informed than the APP’s is anyway.

The APP’s coverage of Christie’s town hall on their pay site consists of four sentences about Christie not saying whether or not he’s running for reelection and instructions to buy the paper if you want to know what else happened.

The other option is to check out the Freehold Patch for complete coverage including video.

Gannett’s strategy of rationing news on its website in the hopes that readers will buy the paper makes less sense than New Jersey restricting gamblers to playing in Atlantic City when they can go to closer locations Pennsylvania, New York or Connecticut.  Their strategy of charging readers on the net to be told to buy the newspaper is absurd. If the APP wants to make money selling content on the Internet, they should get into porn.   At least their customers wouldn’t feel CHEATED and could watch someone else getting screwed.

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Posted: May 9th, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2013 Gubernatorial Politics, Asbury Park, Asbury Park Press, Chris Christie, Chris Smith, Education, Media, New Jersey | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments »

4 Comments on “APP wants to know: Why no action on Lakewood?”

  1. TheDigger said at 12:55 pm on May 9th, 2012:

    Now they want to blame the Orthodox Jewish community for all of the public schools’ evils ….c’mon Gov Christie and Congressman Smith…jump on the APP’s anti-Semitic rampage.

  2. brian said at 2:54 pm on May 9th, 2012:

    When dining at Applebee’s—tip well, Depressed reporters need to eat too……………

  3. Corey said at 8:28 pm on May 9th, 2012:

    The Asbury Park Press still prints a paper? They haven’t been even remotely relevant since Gannett bought them

  4. MoreMonmouthMusings » Blog Archive » He didn’t call them idiots, or nudniks said at 8:10 am on August 1st, 2012:

    […] to Freehold for a Town Hall Meeting the following week, no one brought it up.  That prompted an front page editorial rant that bashed Christie, Congressman Chris Smith and others not directly responsible for the mess in […]